Building a habit of reading leads to all sorts of reading. Gene Luen Yang More Quotes by Gene Luen Yang More Quotes From Gene Luen Yang Creativity requires input, and that's what research is. You're gathering material with which to build. Gene Luen Yang you creativity research gathering The premise of 'Secret Coders' is reminiscent of 'Harry Potter.' An intrepid band of tweens stumbles upon a secret school, only instead of teaching magic, the school teaches coding. Gene Luen Yang magic band secret school The Boxer Rebellion is a war that was fought on Chinese soil in the year 1900. The Europeans, the Japanese and their Chinese Christian allies were on one side. On the other were poor, starving, illiterate Chinese teenagers whom the Europeans referred to as the Boxers. Gene Luen Yang year poor christian war In 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized 120 saints of China, 87 of whom were ethnically Chinese. My home church was incredibly excited because this was the first time the Roman Catholic Church acknowledged Chinese citizens in this way. Gene Luen Yang church home time way Immigrant parents dream that their children will find a place in their new home, and they willingly suffer hardships in service to that dream. That was certainly true of my parents. Gene Luen Yang parents service home children Ch'in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They're proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant. Gene Luen Yang soldiers nation great proud I minored in creative writing in college, and I've played with the idea of doing something more hybrid, but comics are my first love. Gene Luen Yang doing college writing love 'Shadow Hero' was a dream to work on. Gene Luen Yang shadow hero dream work I think, pretty much like everyone around my age, I grew up playing those classic video games. I wouldn't say I was addicted to them, but I definitely liked them. Gene Luen Yang video-games think classic age Religion and culture are two important ways in which we as humans find our identity. That's certainly true for me. Gene Luen Yang me identity culture religion My first job was as a programmer. So I feel like I'm familiar with the information technology sector and the information technology culture. Gene Luen Yang feel job technology culture Every superhero has this superhero identity and a civilian identity. A lot of their lives are about code switching. Gene Luen Yang every about superhero identity 'The Green Turtle' was created in the 1940s by a cartoonist named Chu Hing, one of the first Asian Americans to work in the American comic book industry. Gene Luen Yang american green work book I've tried to write from my own understanding of identity in all my comics, whether it's about superheroes or historical conflicts or monkey gods. Gene Luen Yang monkey my-own understanding identity I talk about religion because it's one of the ways human beings find power and belonging. Religion is more than just that - I think faith traditions give us ways to talk about experiences of the numinous, too - but power and belonging are a big part of it. Gene Luen Yang think power faith religion During the Cultural Revolution, the communists came in, and what they wanted to do was eradicate all sense of traditional Chinese culture. Gene Luen Yang sense traditional revolution culture This is a profession for me, but I started off as a self-publisher working on my own schedule and my own stuff before moving on to graphic novels with First Second Books, where there was definitely a schedule, but it was very different from monthly comics. Gene Luen Yang me moving-on my-own moving In my classroom, I would start my lessons with a quick review of an old topic. Then, I would introduce a new topic. Finally, I would give my students a problem to solve on their own, one that would reinforce what I'd just taught. Gene Luen Yang new start classroom problem 'Shadow Hero' was my first superhero story. I don't know why it took so long. Gene Luen Yang story shadow hero long I took a Logo programming class in fifth grade. Logo is a language specifically designed for the classroom environment. It was basically doodling through words. Gene Luen Yang words classroom environment language
